


Disciplinary Problems

by Philomytha



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: M/M, Roleplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-23
Updated: 2011-05-23
Packaged: 2017-10-19 15:30:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/202387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philomytha/pseuds/Philomytha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Captain Galeni's new Vor lieutenant is causing problems at the embassy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Disciplinary Problems

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt _Duv Galeni/Ivan Vorpatril, roleplaying kink: The drunken Vor lord brought in for questioning by ImpSec._

Duv had lost the Vor lord. Lieutenant Vorpatril had only been on-planet eleven hours. He'd had his induction to the embassy, been introduced to everyone and settled into his quarters, and then gone out to explore London. Duv hadn't thought anything of this; he'd done much the same on his arrival. But it was four am local time and Vorpatril wasn't back and wasn't answering his beeper, and Duv was getting worried. London was supposed to be a safe and civilised place, especially by comparison with Vorbarr Sultana--notorious throughout the rest of the galaxy for its lethally dangerous nightlife--but there were still ways to get into trouble, especially if you didn't know the place.

"Nothing?" he asked Sergeant Ross.

"No, sir. The Metropolitan police don't have anything. He took out some local cash, so we can't trace him through his credit card either."

"Call again," Duv said, though it was the fifth time they'd tried, and if Vorpatril hadn't answered on the previous four tries he probably wasn't going to answer this time either.

There was silence as Ross tried to put the call through again. Duv rubbed his forehead. He wasn't imagining it, he did have a splitting headache.

"They had a man just disappear from the Escobaran embassy, 'bout ten years ago," Ross said chattily. "Never found a trace of him. He just went out one evening and vanished. Apparently--"

"I don't want to know, Sergeant," Duv snapped. He didn't even want to think about the consequences of Vor lords disappearing on his watch. Eleven fucking hours, that was all it took for a High Vor to screw up his life.

There was a commotion outside his office, and Ross looked out.

"Ah. They've got him, sir."

"In my office, now, Lieutenant Vorpatril," Duv snapped.

"Er--" Ross said.

Two of Duv's men were supporting Vorpatril between them. Duv looked him up and down. Atrociously drunk, he concluded, rather than injured.

"You didn't answer your beeper," Duv said at last. It was obviously pointless to yell at Vorpatril now, but he needed to vent some of his feelings. "Do you think you are issued with it to provide entertaining background music whilst you party, Lieutenant?"

"I always answer my beeper," Vorpatril said thickly. "Always. Got totally screwed over one time... I always answer it." He rummaged through his pockets, and a look of almost comical dismay crossed his face. "Lost it."

Shit. "You've lost your beeper?" Duv demanded. "Do you have any idea what a security breach that could be... check again."

Vorpatril went through his pockets again, so slowly and clumsily that Duv snarled under his breath and went to frisk Vorpatril himself. The Vor lord evidently didn't stint on workouts at the gym, he discovered as he ran his hands quickly over him. But he didn't find the beeper. He pushed Vorpatril into a chair.

"Ross. Level three security lockdown. Cancel all the permissions for Vorpatril's beeper immediately and block it."

Ross hurried away, and Duv glared at Vorpatril. "When did you last have it? Do you have any idea where it went? Were you robbed? Pickpocketed?" He checked Vorpatril's pockets again, but he still had his wallet.

Vorpatril blinked at him and ran a hand lazily through his hair, somehow making it attractively tousled rather than messy. "No idea," he mumbled. "If they ever offer you a taste of the local whisky, sir, don't take it. Stuff's lethal."

"I don't care about the local whisky!" He paused. "Who offered it to you?"

"Don' remember... a pretty girl, I think."

"Where were you?" Duv demanded.

Vorpatril stared into space and didn't answer. Duv seized him by a shoulder and shook him.

"Where were you? Answer me, Lieutenant!"

"A bar, of course," Vorpatril said in an offended tone. "'m not an idiot."

"Did she come near you? Touch you? Could she have taken your beeper?" If this was a planned theft rather than a chance robbery, they were in real trouble.

"It's like Beta Colony here," Vorpatril answered, leaning back in the chair until his head rested against the wall behind him. "Pretty girl drinking and chatting with you, all friendly and nice ... and then it turns out she's got a wife."

Duv tried to decipher this. "Do you think she took your beeper, Lieutenant?" he repeated with exaggerated patience. There was nothing quite so bad as interrogating drunks, but if there was a security breach, they couldn't wait for him to sober up.

"Didn't have my beeper," Vorpatril said.

"You didn't have your beeper before you met her? All right, what were you doing before?"

Vorpatril closed his eyes, and Duv shook him again.

"Get a grip on yourself, and tell me everywhere you went this evening!"

Vorpatril blinked alert for a minute, and reached out to touch the Horus-eyes on Duv's collar. "You're ImpSec," he said irrelevantly. "I love ImpSec. You always know where you stand with them."

Duv shoved his hand away, and Vorpatril began to slip out of the chair, eyes closing again. Duv pushed him upright.

"Forgot it," Vorpatril said at last, opening his eyes and gazing up at Duv with a beatific smile on his face, as if he expected Duv to find this charming. "Forgot to take it with me."

Duv released him abruptly. "Ross!" he called. "Send someone to check Vorpatril's room for his beeper." God, why hadn't he done that in the first place? Except that he couldn't imagine a lieutenant who'd been in the service six years going out without his beeper when he was on call.

Vorpatril slid out of the chair onto the floor, but Duv ignored him. A minute later, Ross returned, holding the missing beeper. Then Vorpatril let out a snore, and Duv sat abruptly behind his desk and covered his face with his hands. All the junior officers in the service to choose from, and he got this one.

***

And it kept happening. Vorpatril turned out to be a moderately competent officer during the day, polite and friendly in that special High Vor I-don't-have-to-do-anything-you-tell-me-but-I-will-because-it's-good-form way that set Duv's teeth on edge and meant that he spent as little time as he could around him, but after hours Vorpatril got into scrape after scrape after scrape. The next time, it was a dog that Vorpatril, returning unusually sober from an evening out, had spotted struggling in the Thames. Vorpatril had waded in to pull it out, nearly been swept away by the current and had staggered home dripping and shivering and clutching a vermin-ridden puppy three hours late for his night shift. The time after that, he'd wound up in a brawl with a bunch of locals who had apparently insulted the honour of the Emperor, and Duv had had to collect him from the local police station. He picked up local girls and stayed too late with them and got robbed by one of them, this time only of his wallet, he came back hideously drunk from evenings out and once threw up on Duv's boots, and generally behaved as though he was here on Earth to party and live the high life without any thought for the consequences. Each time, Duv chewed him out, and each time Vorpatril looked abashed and meekly chastened and like he had every intention of behaving himself--until the next time. It was all too obvious that Vorpatril was accustomed to relying on his good looks, his charm and his powerful relatives to stay out of trouble. Well, Duv couldn't deny the good looks, nor, reluctantly, the charm, but he hated the idea of letting Vorpatril get away with his behavour because of who his cousins were.

But he was at his wit's end as to how to solve the problem. He couldn't put a formal censure on Vorpatril's record: the dubious Komarran accusing the Emperor's cousin of bad conduct wasn't a story that ended well for him, especially since Vorpatril had a tidy collection of good-conduct reports from his previous posts. Probably because he went out drinking with the other Vor in the capital, Duv thought bitterly. And if he asked the ambassador for help, he would be admitting that he couldn't control his men. But no amount of lectures and punishment duties seemed to make any difference: Vorpatril kept finding ways to get into minor trouble. And it would be Duv whose career would suffer for it.

***

It had been a long and tedious day at the end of a long and tedious week. All the annual inspections had come due at once, there had been a series of lengthy and boring local functions that the Ambassador and Duv had had to go to, Vorpatril had caused a minor security breach again by forgetting to follow protocol and had made six hours of extra paperwork for Duv, and Duv had caught a cold and wanted to do nothing so much as lie in bed with a lot of cold remedies and be left alone.

Instead, he was struggling through the last set of the inspection reports when he was disturbed by loud singing outside. Vorpatril, he recognised, singing bawdy love songs in Barrayaran French. Duv groaned aloud. On reflex, he opened the door and began, "This is not a music hall, Lieutenant."

Vorpatril grinned and swayed towards him.

"And I hope you remember," Duv went on sharply, "that you will be reporting to me at 0600 tomorrow in full uniform, don't you, Lieutenant? If you're even five minutes late--" He stopped, looking at Vorpatril's friendly blank expression. "Oh, what's the point?" he muttered. "Go sleep it off. I've had enough of this." He turned and went back into his office, suddenly unspeakably tired of Barrayarans and Barrayaran nonsense. Not to mention handsome Vor lords who couldn't maintain basic discipline.

"But--aren't you going to yell at me?" Vorpatril's voice floated after him. "I could sing some more..." He sang a few more bars, his tenor voice going flat on the high notes, then wandered into Duv's office, arrogantly without invitation. Duv opened his mouth to snap at him for that, then shut it again. High Vor. No point.

"Aren't you going to yell at me?" Vorpatril repeated, sounding almost cheated.

Duv suddenly lost his temper completely. "What is the point?" he repeated. "What would be the fucking point of yelling at you? You've made it exquisitely clear, _Lieutenant_ , that you are the Emperor's cousin and you don't have to do anything you don't want to do, especially when it's only a Komarran asking. Ordering. I understand all too well, Lord Vorpatril. Now get out of my office."

Vorpatril stood still, gaping idiotically at him. "That's not--God, sir, that's not... it's not like that at all."

He sounded so shocked Duv almost believed him. He knew he should walk that outburst back, accept whatever fake-sincere apology Vorpatril wanted to make, and they would all pretend this hadn't happened. That was the Vor way of doing things.

Instead he leaned forward across his desk and hissed, "Really? Explain to me what it is, then, Vorpatril. Explain why you defy my orders, ignore my rules, fail to respect my authority and behave as if you're at a party when you should be earning your pay like the rest of us. Explain it to me."

Vorpatril had gone white. "No," he whispered, "no, that's not--God." He rubbed his hand across his face, and finally blurted out, "It's just--it's the only time you ever _talk_ to me."

"Oh, it's all a game to you, is it?" Duv snarled. "Of course it is. You were born with everything you need in life all laid out for you. Well, I wasn't, and it's not a game for me."

"That's not what I meant," Vorpatril said, gazing wide-eyed at him even as he swayed on his feet. "I do--I do respect you, sir. I respect you, and I do take this seriously, and I never thought--fuck, I never _thought._ " He paused. "It's not that you're a Komarran, sir, I swear by my word as Vorpatril it's not. It didn't even occur to me that you might think--I've never even met a Komarran before, really."

Duv winced. He'd heard that, and its variations, so many times. _You're not what I expected a Komarran to be like._

"But it was the only time you ever even seemed to notice me, and--and I do respect you, sir," he repeated. "I _like_ you. And I never thought..."

Duv stared at him. The room seemed to tilt around him as if he were as drunk as Vorpatril. Vorpatril wasn't defying him because he was only a Komarran. Vorpatril was trying to get his attention because he had a crush on him. He looked at Vorpatril standing there gazing at him in unhappiness and confusion and, he recognised for the first time, admiration, then put his head in his hands.

"Sir--Captain Galeni," Vorpatril continued in a small voice, "I'm really, really sorry."

Duv raised his head slowly. "You fucking idiot," he said, unemotionally. Vorpatril started, then looked suddenly much more cheerful, his eyes widening. Duv stood up and went around his desk, then circled Vorpatril slowly. "You will not get into any more stupid scrapes," he whispered. "You will not show up for work hungover or disturb us when you go out partying. You will follow my rules. And--" he dropped his voice and purred into Vorpatril's ear, "if you want to play any more games with me, you will damn well _ask_ me first."

Vorpatril was breathing hard, his lips parted. Duv circled him again, feeling like he was flying. Then Vorpatril swayed, Duv seized his shoulders, and Vorpatril leaned in towards him and kissed him.

A few minutes later, Duv hazily realised that Vorpatril had somehow still got exactly what he wanted out of this deal. Bloody Vor. But Duv had a High Vor in his office kissing him like he was the most desirable person in the world, and that, he thought, went a long way towards making things better.


End file.
